Metabonomics approach reveals the vital role of Huangqi in Huangqi Jianzhong tang against chronic atrophic gastritis coupled with molecular docking and BAWP

Huangqi (HQ) is a commonly Chinese herb that has been widely used in China for thousands of years. Many classic traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) prescriptions consist of HQ, which is known as “eight Huangqi out of ten prescriptions”. However, its contribution to the whole formula remains unclear. In this study, a classical prescription Huangqi jianzhong tang (HQJZ) was selected to evaluate the “monarch” role of HQ against chronic atrophic gastritis (CAG) rats based on pharmacology and metabonomic strategy. Traditional pharmacology indexes, including body weight variety, pathological examination and biochemical indexes of gastric juice showed that the efficacy of HQJZ and HQ were better than HY (HQJZ without HQ). Serum metabonomics analysis also showed that the same separation of metabolic features among them. 9 differential endogenous metabolites were screened and involved into the metabolic alterations induced by CAG. Among them, 7, 6 and 4 metabolites were regulated by HQJZ, HQ and HY, respectively. Three important pathways, including pyruvate metabolism, glycolysis or gluconeogenesis, aminoacyl-tRNA biosynthesis, were further screened out as the most important pathways related to the efficacy of HQ contributing to HQJZ by integrating MetaboAnalyst, systemsDock and binding ability weighted polypharmacology index (BAWP). Our work provided a novel method to study the metabolic contribution of HQ to the whole HQJZ in the treatment of CAG, which might be beneficial to understand the fundamental idea behind formula construction of TCM.